1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to the field of computer software and more specifically to managing copies of a document in a distributed computing environment such as the Internet.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet has become a cultural fixture as a source of both information and entertainment. Many businesses are creating Internet sites as an integral part of their marketing efforts, informing consumers of the products or services offered by the business or providing other information seeking to engender brand loyalty. Many federal, state, and local government agencies are also employing Internet sites for informational purposes, particularly agencies which must interact with virtually all segments of society such as the Internal Revenue Service and secretaries of state. Providing informational guides and/or searchable databases of public records online may reduce operating costs.
Currently, content providers and/or authors, whether they be individuals or corporations, will normally attempt to distribute their resources (documents, logos, data, graphic, etc.) on the web in one of two ways: they either provide a server from which all of their resources must be loaded or they allow copies of their resources to be replicated at remote sites. One such example is advertising banners on web sites. Each of these methods has problems. With the former, the author""s server(s) must have massive bandwidth to keep up with the enormous number of hits likely to be generated. Usually the bandwidth is insufficient, thus causing the advertisements to load slowly which therefore leads to otherwise xe2x80x9cfastxe2x80x9d pages to load slowly. This method also risks worldwide impact if the server fails.
With the second method, the advertiser all but completely gives up control. Synchronizing the documents/images/logos across the Internet is practically impossible. All the advertiser can do is provide updates and hope that the remote sites update the changes in a timely manner. Moreover, since each and every site must have a different (but identical) copy, possibly identified by a different name, and certainly identified by a different unique site/path/file name, the document/image must be retransmitted over the net to a user even if many copies have already been loaded to the user from other sitesxe2x80x94for example, a ubiquitous Coca-Cola logo. Therefore, different names, or the same name on different sites, cause the browser to assume it is a different document/image/logo.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method and apparatus for distributing documents.
The present invention provides a method for synchronizing copies of a first document in a distributed computing environment. A path to a preferred repository for the first document and a path to a master repository for the first document are embedded in a second document. A copy of the first document is retrieved from the preferred repository. The master repository is checked to determine whether the retrieved copy is a copy of a most recent version of the first document. In response to the determination that the retrieved copy is the most recent version of the first document, the second document is formatted using the retrieved copy.